This invention relates to eyeglasses, hereinafter referred to as "glasses", and with said application encompassing regular eyeglasses, sunglasses, and safety glasses, and is more particularly concerned with temple pieces for glasses, and said temple pieces having counterweighed rearward extremities comprising hook members, and said counterweights being both removable and interchangeable, and designed to facilitate proper positioning of the lenses while at the same time relieving the nose and ears of the wearer of excessive weight and trauma.
Throughout the years there has been an unceasing effort to design glasses that fit comfortably on a wearer while staying in a proper position for maximum advantage of the lens design. Many improvements have been made, but there are still a number of needed improvements.
The basic arrangement of the prior art in glasses includes nosepieces between the lenses that rest on the bridge of the wearer's nose, and temple pieces to pass over and behind the ears; thus, the bridge of the nose carries the weight of the lenses, while the ears prevent forward motion of the glasses by means of hooked members passing behind them.
There have been primary problems with the usual arrangement of glasses, and these are: (1) that the weight on the bridge of the nose causes some skin trauma with resulting soreness and discomfort to the wearer, and (2) due to the incline of the bridge of the nose the lenses move downward moving the optical axes of the lenses out of position for the proper correction of vision. This sliding down has usually been corrected by taking the glasses to an optical shop to have the earhooks bent down so as to grip the ears of the wearer more tightly. This causes soreness at the ears, and the process must be repeated frequently because putting the glasses on and off tends to straighten out the earhooks in a short while.
The disadvantages discussed above were largely overcome by this inventor's patents U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,768,892 titled "Eyeglasses with Counterbalanced Temple Pieces", and U.S. Pat. No. 3,953,114 titled "Cushion Retaining Means for Eyeglasses".
In the case of the prior patent mentioned above a counterweight was either attached to the hooked member of a standard temple piece, or made integrally within the hook member. The latter patent cited provided for cushioning to be used in conjunction with the counterweights or separately from them, the cushions lessening a feeling of weight on the ears, and providing a somewhat limited means of horizontal adjustment of the frames.